Open Bug 470483 Opened 16 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Only one window restored when using the "close group" feature from Windows taskbar

Categories

(Firefox :: Session Restore, defect)

3.5 Branch
x86
Windows XP
defect

Tracking

()

People

(Reporter: morac, Unassigned)

References

Details

(Keywords: helpwanted, Whiteboard: [wontfix?])

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1b2) Gecko/20081201 Firefox/3.1b2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1b2) Gecko/20081201 Firefox/3.1b2

If the user has the "Show my windows and tabs from last time" startup option set and closes the current browsing session by right clicking on the Firefox tab in the Windows task bar and selecting "close group", only one window will be restored the next time Firefox runs.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Set the When Firefox starts option to "show my windows and tabs from last time".
2. Make sure the "group similar taskbar buttons" checkbox is checked in Windows Taskbar and Properties settings (found by right clicking taskbar and selecting properties).
2. Open enough browser window so that the Firefox tabs on the Windows task bar merge into one tab.  
3. Right click on this group and select "close group".
Actual Results:  
Only one browser window is saved and therefore restored when Firefox is next started.

Expected Results:  
All open windows should be saved and restored.

This technically is not a SessionStore bug since choosing the Windows task bar item "close group" feature appears to close all the open Firefox Windows sequentially instead of triggering Firefox to shut down, but since it only affects the Session Restore feature as far as I can tell that's what I selected.

If there is no way to trigger a shutdown even from the "close group" menu, perhaps SessionStore could detect that X amount of windows were closed within Y amount of time and save them all?
SessionStore currently intentionally tries no to be too clever about when a window is closed and when Firefox is actually exited. If the "close group" can be distinguished from a user closing several windows in a row really fast, then I'm all for it, otherwise we should IMO stick to the predictable behavior we currently have (and use Undo Close Window from bug 394759 as a safety net).
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
Keywords: helpwanted
AFAICT there's no way of knowing whether "close group" caused all our windows to close simultaneously or something else - we just get a WM_CLOSE message for each window. Suggesting WONTFIX, considering that we shouldn't want to restore two windows closed in quick succession by the user through other means (and note that a "clever solution" would have to take into account the user canceling closing several of the windows through the "Confirm Close [multiple tabs]" prompt).
Whiteboard: [wontfix?]
Simon, isn't it the same feature which is getting implemented in bug 394759? Closing a group means closing an open browser window. Until bug 394759 isn't fixed we aren't able to restore a window. Personally I would tend to mark this bug as dupe.
Version: unspecified → 3.1 Branch
(In reply to comment #3)
This bug is about automatically restoring all the windows closed together (which doesn't look fixable) while the other is about mitigating the dataloss issue involved, so they really aren't the same (and each one could theoretically be fixed without the other).
So this is different from quitting the application via File->Exit? What does the close group entry in detail? As what I see it closes window by window and quits the application afterward. It is the same as when I manually close all windows, right?
(In reply to comment #6)
> So this is different from quitting the application via File->Exit?

It's the equivalent of manually closing each window in sequence, so yes, it's different and I don't see any way to change that (cf. comment #2).

BTW: For fun, try the following: Manually create a group (by holding the Ctrl-key and clicking on the windows in the taskbar) containing e.g. two out of three open browser windows, the Error Console and a Windows Explorer window, and then right-click and select Close Group... In this case, just closing the windows individually makes sense. The issue is just that our users don't/won't see the subtle difference.
Just found this thread after losing all my work tabs in a second window...

Now I realize that File->Exit within Fx and "Close all windows" from the Windows 7 taskbar aren't equivalent.

Functionally, they should be equivalent
Severity: normal → S3
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